


Wild

by seraglio



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Forbidden Love, Game of Thrones-esque, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Not Related, Prince Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, Slow-ish burn, ben is an awkward idiot, magic force shenanigans, rey and ben are both 18, the skywalkers are pretty much targaryens but with less incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:50:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9645122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraglio/pseuds/seraglio
Summary: "My mother will demand you marry, one day." He kept the acid from his tone, as to not be so terribly transparent to her. If his mother had not made sense of his feelings for the girl sitting adjacent to him, dressed in the lace of a nightgown so thin it should have been sinful to even drape it across herself, Rey would have never assumed as much of him. "They won't care for your mind, but you'll be expected to - "Behave as a highborn woman should, he would have said, if not for the sour taste of it on the tip of his tongue. To imagine her as a broken and tamed thing in place of headstrong Rey, racing stallions through the forest and spinning his grandfather's blade with clumsy fingers, had him curling his fingers into the leather cover in his hands.---Ben has never craved anything as fervently as he craves Rey, save for a prophecy and, with it, the promise of knighthood.OR: A Game of Thrones-esque AU, in which politics care little for what it is Rey and Ben want.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's been awhile since I've written any fanfiction, but this idea has been sort of nudging me. Comments and kudos are appreciated to let me know if you're interested in the story, as I'm a bit judgmental of my own work!

Beautiful. 

The word didn't do her justice from where he stood, watching the rivulets of sweat cascade from her forehead.

She had been but a girl when she had swept through the castle corridors like a storm, too blind to realize the shift her presence had brought with it. How he had hated her then - loathed her and stewed in his chambers like a petulant child at the sight of her attempting to hide behind his mother's skirts - as though she could be blamed for every crime his family had committed against him. As though she were solely responsible for the mess the Skywalkers had made of themselves, tangled in their deceit and politics, though Ben were less than eager to acknowledge that their dirty hands weren't the thing to repulse him.

No, of course not. It had been their neglect, casting him off to wet nurses and tutors, chambermaids and servants, to have him out of their hair. But this tiny girl of six and ten, with a waist that could span no more than the length of his palms, caked in mud and dirt and shivering from the wet moisture sticking to her skin, had received their unwavering attention. 

She had hardly changed now at the age of eight and ten, he mused from his window, from the desert rat he had first glimpsed trailing muck through the open doors of the capital. Even from his voyeuristic position he could smell the earthy scent that clung to her skin after a venture into the forest - against Luke's advisement, but he supposed that only endeared her to him  _more_ than he cared to confess - and the dirt beneath her nails, hardly befitting of the lady his mother expected.

Beautiful, though she would never be his. The thought stayed with him as he maneuvered through the spiraling stretch of a staircase, refraining from nearly knocking the kitchen maids from his path toward the courtyard where Rey stood with sword in hand. No one needed to be privy to the power she held over him, lowly hired staff or otherwise.

"Stealing again, scavenger?"

She hadn't heard him approach, he thought with some amusement, though it impressed him less that she had not even so much as sensed his hovering. How could she influence him so, with such intensity, and yet reciprocate none of the pull he felt toward her? 

The pinch of his frown at the notion was mirrored in her mouth. No, she was much more than beautiful; the exhilaration that sparked within him at the sight of her anger proved as much, somehow more appealing when turned toward him. 

"Your sword," he elaborated, drawl almost bored as he gestured to the glinting metal in her hands as it caught the glare of the sun. She looked absurdly small in comparison to the broadsword tucked within her hands, hardly contained in her grasp, and he saw her forearms strain with either the struggle to lift the bulk of it or restrain herself from swinging it against his neck. "You have a habit of taking what doesn't belong to you, it seems."

Any fool could read the name neatly scrawled on its hilt.  _King_ _Anakin Skywalker,_ and not rightfully his own. Had anyone but Rey dared to touch it, thought themselves so brazen as to covet his possessions, he would have nearly taken their hand for it. As it stood, his stomach only twisted, blood heating with his admiration of the sight she presented. Chest heaving, cheeks flushed, eyes abashed as they flickered to the sword's decorated handle. 

"I couldn't read it," he heard her mutter after a moment's pause, and he immediately felt an apologetic pain twist in his chest.  _Couldn't read it._ A child could have made sense of the lettering if they had been reared in a proper home, among nobility and wealth, but Rey - 

She moved before he could open his mouth. Once he had processed what he had occurred, the sword was at his feet and Rey's skirts were twisting around the corner, hasty to remove herself from his company.

* * *

"Must I remind you she's your father's ward?"

He had heard this lecture more than he could count. His mother, from her stern tone, took no pleasure in repeating it; if anything, she only eyed him more harshly than she had that first day he had sputtered in indignation, appalled at a girl -  _girl,_ he had called her, as if she hadn't been the same age, six and ten and already having shed her moonsblood - turning his father's head.

When he said nothing, the demure woman across from him sighed with no small hint of exasperation. Silence, he surmised, was a wiser alternative than the words burning like bile in his throat. 

 _He is not my father,_ he wanted to scream. Had wanted to scream, from the moment he had peered across his mother's vanity and taken in Han Solo where he stood. Han Solo, known scoundrel, unable to win his grandfather's favor. Han Solo, captain of the Queensguard, who never dared to look him in the eye. Han Solo, who lingered near his mother and father with feigned indifference, who would prefer Ben thought himself a monstrosity of his lineage instead of revealing the truth of his origins. 

It was no matter. The kingdoms had thought the same of the Skywalkers made centuries before, and he supposed they thought them a nest of insanity now, too wrapped within their notions of power and purity of blood to much care for their inbreeding. Neither did they care, it seemed, if it entailed a crown in their hands.

The mere thought of it disgusted him, but grandfather and the prophecy had said - 

"Benjamin." The usage of that name had him straightening in his chair in spite of his wandering thoughts, suddenly attentive. "Stay away from the girl. You've taunted her enough."

_Stay away from the girl._

He had little choice, or say, in the matter. He was intended to be a knight, after all, the finest since his grandfather - before he had taken a wife, before he had been king, before he had burned the entire kingdom for one woman and stained the Skywalker name with supposed madness.

Women were merely a distraction. Women were merely a distraction, though his mother had insisted he marry, and his father had never thought him worthy. Too volatile, too angry.

 _Too powerful,_ something inside of him whispered, brimming with anger.

He left the room without a word, slamming the heavy doors behind him with a flourish. 

* * *

 

"I refuse - "

Only a portion of the conversation filtered through the door. He felt like a spy, standing as he was, witnessing what slips of a discussion he could make sense of as he imagined the irate twist in her expression, the stubborn tilt to her chin whenever she argued. 

The imagined vision would have been pleasing, if not for the echo of his father -  _Luke,_ the man that had paraded himself as his father, who looked nothing like him and must have thought him too daft to admit to the trust - and the desperation tinging his voice.

"Rey." Imploring, soft, and then: "You have no choice."

His limbs were frozen, for as much as his blood was boiling within him, and only when the tense silence was interrupted by the creaking of a door did he sidestep into the corner of the corridor. Luke wouldn't much appreciate his presence anywhere near Rey - unsullied, too pure for Ben Solo, but that bitter self-loathing banished itself once Luke's figure slipped around the edge of the hallway.

Waiting tried his patience, but wait he did, though it did little to ease away the tenseness of his fingers as they curved around the handle to her door. 

Too big. He was too big as he shouldered into her quarters, all lanky limbs that betrayed his attempts to appear taller, composed. 

If it hadn't been the size of his body and awkward maneuvering to situate himself between the door and her wardrobe to remind him of how improper this was, to remind him how he simply did not  _fit_ , the red-rimmed line of Rey's eyes would have served the purpose. 

But she neither acknowledged the drying moisture beneath her eyes or the streaks of red in her gaze, and Ben admired her all of the more for it when she rounded on him, blatantly displeased with an uninvited guest.

"Did you forget to knock, or are you too important for something so beneath you?"

Her voice was fractured, a scraping sound in the room, but it was an effort. As such, Ben chose to make no comment of her evidently emotional state, gesturing instead to the books tucked beneath one arm. 

That, somehow, seemed to incense her more than he had presumed.

"What is this?" she hissed, and Ben was reminded distinctly of a skittish predator, too defensive to allow anyone near. It was his fault, he knew - punishment for two years of rejecting her whenever she had looked to him with soft gazes and softer touches, desperate for his approval when he had already won his family's favor so easily. 

And so he approached her as one, slow in his steps and maintaining his distance near the foot of her bed. Any closer would be inappropriate, if being in a lady's chambers without a witness wasn't already dreadfully inappropriate. Ben's ears flooded with a warmth that stretched into his cheeks, though he stubbornly met her gaze.

"Books." She looked affronted that he would answer with something so obvious, and Ben had to share the sentiment, schooling his expression even as he berated himself. 

"You have no tutors." Another obvious statement, but she had to be shrewd enough to realize Luke's reasoning for sheltering her. Few men would have interest in an illiterate wife, if they had any interest in an orphan and presumably a bastard to begin with, but even with that knowledge setting him aflame, Skywalker was squandering her. 

Any fool could sense the excitement within her, the whimsy, the need for adventure. It sparkled in her gaze now, glimpsing at him with a gentleness he hadn't earned from her since he had rolled a fruit across his plate and onto her own. If only she knew the true extent of what she could learn, but he hardly intended to send her scurrying off or scolding him yet again. 

"May I?" 

He was sweeping across the room before she could reply, steeling himself before he rushed out in a flurry of nerves. She made no protests as he sat delicately on the edge of her bed like it would burn him for imagining her twisted in its furs, the dampness of her hair fanned across the softness of a pillow. 

"I know how to read well enough," she snapped, suddenly, as he placed the items between them. He would have recoiled at the shift in attitude, if he weren't so accustomed to being the target of that annoyance. 

Humiliated. She was humiliated. It was too palpable, from the speckled flush of her cheeks spanning across her freckles to the tentative fascination she was giving the books he had collected from the library. 

"You don't," he said quietly, more gently than he had ever heard himself, and flicked open the page of one. "My mother will demand you marry, one day." He kept the acid from his tone, as to not be so terribly transparent to her. If his mother had not made sense of his feelings for the girl sitting adjacent to him, dressed in the lace of a nightgown so thin it should have been sinful to even drape it across herself,  _Rey_ would have never assumed as much of him. "They won't care for your mind, but you'll be expected to - " 

 _Behave as a highborn woman should_ , he would have said, if not for the sour taste of it on the tip of his tongue. To imagine her as a broken and tamed thing in place of headstrong Rey, racing stallions through the forest and spinning his grandfather's blade with clumsy fingers, had him curling his fingers into the leather cover in his hands. 

"She has already demanded I marry," came the trickle of her voice, and Ben had to feign interest in the ink of the page in front of him. She was  _dripping_ anger. He could sense it thrum inside of him, and had he not been so convinced she hated him so vividly, he would have reached for where her fingertips curled and clawed into the blankets.

Now was not the appropriate time of envisioning how she would tear and scratch at the fabric, had she ever awarded him the opportunity - ever thought of him as deserving - to press her back into the sheets and demand she exert that anger upon him. 

"You're hardly the first." He loathed the way it sounded. What had meant to be a comprehension, camaraderie - for had his mother not demanded the same of him? - rung harsh to his own ears. And to her own, it seemed, as she opened her mouth with a fire to her gaze that had him moving to quieten her anger before she could reprimand him.

"My mother would force me to marry, if my purpose weren't elsewhere." And even with his strides toward knighthood, she had not relented. "Something about heirs," he muttered, face suddenly red, but he couldn't scorn it much when it had elicited the makings of a grin from Rey. Or what constituted a grin, anyway, with her refusal to unleash her teeth from the corner and offer him such a sight. 

The drag of her teeth against her lips was a sight in an entirely different manner, and he had to keep his attention strictly on his hands to keep himself from straying toward fantasies.

"Read," he ordered suddenly as he pushed the books toward her hands, ignoring the spark seeping from her knuckles and into his own as they brushed. "Come find me when you've finished with this."

A finger tapped against the page and then he was withdrawing, battling against his own compulsion to linger as he nearly burst the doors open to retreat from the doe-eyed gaze burning into his back. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You've been ignoring me," she pressed, annoyed at how absolutely disgruntled she sounded. He didn't lift his gaze from the swirls of ink on parchment, jaw as tense as his frame appeared. 
> 
> Rey was not tentative as she reached forward, palm flattening against his chest to earn his attention. He flinched like he had been burned, scorched by the simple brush of her fingers, and Rey frowned. 
> 
> "I have been ignoring you," he repeated, monotone and seemingly bored by the conversation in spite of his reluctance to be touched. "You're maddening."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the introduction of some of the storyline! I don't have a beta to proofread for me, so please forgive any typos, and thank you for all the comments and kudos you've given me.

“Alderaan.”

The interruption to her studies had been so abrupt that Rey would have jumped in her chair, were she not stubbornly determined to keep her composure. Years at court had, at the very least, ensured that much of her skill; never let one pinpoint your vulnerabilities, lest you intend to become their target. An important lesson, surely, and one she had learned without difficulty.

If only the same could be said of every other area in which her self-presumed tutor thought her lacking. Too boyish in her gowns, too clumsy in her weaving, too sloppy with a quill - it was a persistent string of criticisms from his mouth, but that was hardly uncharacteristic for Ben Solo. Not of a man praised for his elegance and his eloquence, however disagreeable Rey thought those notions.

Any maiden whispering and giggling like a gaggle of buffoons at the sight of him mustn't have been acquainted with his awful temper and sullen stares, one of which was directed toward her presently as her brows pinched together.

"What?" The tone of her voice was so harsh it was nearly a demand. Rey would have agreed to that categorization; royal blood or otherwise, he had disrupted  _her_ without an invitation.

She imagined a scolding in retaliation, some babbling lecture to distinguish what was a proper greeting for her position, but she was no kitchen maid tripping over her own skirts in an attempt to please him.

"Alderaan," he repeated, gesturing to the scribbled ink across her map as he shouldered into the seat next to her.

Was it necessary to sit so closely? A glance toward the other chairs proved them empty, though Rey made no move to scrape across the floor in a bid to create distance between them. It had to be his habitual need to intimidate, she surmised, and in spite of her stubborn refusal to cower, the touch of his knee against her own was too discomforting for her to accept.

She withdrew, feigning composure as she stared pointedly at the map, refusing to please him by hastening to fill in her drawing with the country his thumb traced.

Her quill slid across the parchment to scrawl  _Tatooine_ against Jakku's borders instead, ignoring the subtle amusement in his expression at her open, petty rebellion.

"My mother's kingdom," Ben continued, as though she hadn't replied with petulant silence. "Before Anakin Skywalker worked to unite the kingdoms as one."

"Before he destroyed them, you mean." No such look of amusement lingered in his eyes as she glimpsed him through her peripherals, but his scowl hardly deterred her.

"Is that what they told you in your hovel on Jakku?" There was no kindness to his sneer when her head snapped to attention, eyes narrowed into slits. It wasn't so much a hovel as it was any house that allowed her to feed from their scraps and curl in their corners, but she had no interest in offering him another weapon against her by detailing her stays in whorehouses.

The whores, at least, had been kind, gentle, trailed by the sweet aroma of their oils. Plutt, on the other hand --- 

"I am not beneath you," she snapped, open hands slapping against the wooden surface of the table as she stood. "I may know nothing of your countries or your traditions, or even your courtesies, but I am not a fool. The kingdom talks, Your Grace."

What should have been a tittle of reverence was sharpened into a blade by her tongue, and Ben winced as though he had been sliced. 

Anakin Skywalker had been a madman, a murderer. She had heard the stories, had listened to them from mouths of wanderers when she had little option but to tend the tavern's for coin. Obsessed with his own lineage and a prophecy spoken by his supposed seer, once renowned for his shrewd power and turned into a single-minded man, until his son had taken the throne.

"Do you know what it is they say?" It had been a rhetorical question only, and had she not been so easily provoked in his presence, Rey imagined she would have possessed more restraint as her anger translated itself into the bite of her syllables. "They say his grandson shares in his madness."

The movement of his constricting, swallowing throat was all she dared to memorize as she strode from the room. 

* * *

They did not speak for what seemed to resemble an eon.

She had made it a point to surround herself with company to deter Ben's approaches. Her shame had been nearly overwhelming when she had turned from him and ventured to her quarters, but her anger had not evaporated, and neither was she particularly apologetic for the gossip. The court was, presumably, more entertained by the outburst he had inflicted upon the table when she had turned from him and stomped away. Broken, they had said, and the glasses that had adorned the table with it. 

The rumors of his penchant for destruction did little to endear her toward him, but his refusal to so much as spare her a glance when they entered the same room incensed her more than she could comprehend.

She could spy his imposing silhouette from where she sat perched at the expansive library's only table, and had it not sounded so ridiculous in her mind, she would have accused him of intentionally taunting her. As it stood, she refused to give him the pleasure of playing his game.

If they were to play games, they would play  _hers._

"You're in my way."

Her footsteps must have been appropriately quite in their approach, given the crease of his eyebrows and bemused swivel of his head. Her amusement was only tampered by the memory of their previous discussion, and the bitter mocking that had tinged his tone when he had spoken to her like one would lecture a child.

Apparently, not even the most sullen behavior could prod him into the reply she had wanted from him. As though he had read her mind, witnessed the intentions written on her expression, he turned from her without so much as a word.

In an act of petulant wrath, she took it upon herself to slam her foot into his.

The hiss was almost as satisfying as his tightened grasp on the scroll nearly tearing in his grasp, though Rey could read nothing of it aside from  _Force_ and  _magic_ as she tilted her head and stepped into the space between himself and the cluttered shelves. 

"You've been ignoring me," she pressed, annoyed at how absolutely disgruntled she sounded. He didn't lift his gaze from the swirls of ink on parchment, jaw as tense as his frame appeared. 

Rey was not tentative as she reached forward, palm flattening against his chest to earn his attention. He flinched like he had been burned, scorched by the simple brush of her fingers, and Rey frowned. 

"I have been ignoring you," he repeated, monotone and seemingly bored by the conversation in spite of his reluctance to be touched. "You're maddening."

It didn't sound like an insult. Even if she longed to approach it as one, to provoke them toward that familiar territory of bickering and childish insults, she could not summon the violent resentment necessary to engage him in a row. 

"Maddening," she reiterated in turn. The volume of her voice reminded her of the wind whispering against her windows, little more than a breathless reply, and she witnessed his throat bob as his eyes wandered across her face. "How am  _I_ maddening?"

Her affront trickled through as she tipped her chin upward, attempting to seem unflinching but only knotting the muscles in the nape of her neck. Damn him for being so ludicrously  _tall_. And arrogant, entitled,  _maddening_ -

"Stubborn, defiant, unhygienic." He muttered out each quality as though he were reciting it from a book instead, but his focus was upon her and her alone, burning its way through her as he stepped closer, closer, into her space until the shelf prodded sharply into the small of her back and her palm curled around the bookcase to keep her balance. "You make a poor student, and you would make a poorer wife." 

"A student is a reflection of their teacher," she snapped, as defiant as he suggested her to be as she snarled in his face. He only grinned, looking mad with the wide stretch of a smirk splayed across his plump lips, and caged her in as his palms smacked into the shelf on either side of her. "But you would prefer to speak of your grandfather - " She did not refrain from spitting out the word like a particularly appalling taste, and almost delighted in his apparent frustration with her insolence. "Than to teach me anything worthy of my attention."

"Do you want me to teach you?" His voice was a rumble in her ear that would have invited a shiver across her skin if she weren't so focused on clenching her jaw.

"I won't be married off like cattle," she retorted, and the sensation of his smile brushed against her cheek, only to be deprived of it as she said, with a conviction that could not be deterred or argued against, "Your father's temple needs a priestess, and I - " She paused, battling back her own emotions. "I want something more than this cage."


End file.
